Organizing concepts leads to clear thinking

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The Right Prescription for a Crowd-source Experiment

My last post was an experiment in using remote online card sorting as a way to build a taxonomy. And why start small. My sample data was the picklist used on www.medicare.gov when you search on “What does Medicare Cover?” For my experiment, I used websort.net. as the remote card sorting tool.

First, let’s start with the good news. Online tools are basically very cool way to bring together remote groups where it would be too expensive or politically impossible to connect. That’s the promise.

But to have a successful remote card sort requires preliminary planning and work. Here are my lessons learned:

Keep the test under 20 minutes: Online card sorting is a time-consuming task for the participant, so for the experiment to be successful, you need to make sure that participants have the time and that the number of terms to be sorted are not overwhelming. Joseph Busch of Taxonomy Strategies and Dave Cooksey, saturdave.com suggest 20 minutes/25 terms at most. My comprehensive test of all 132 picklist terms from the Medicare site was too big.

Pretest the taxonomy: Since the card-sorting activity is a one-time opportunity to engage testers , some prior testing of the taxonomy should occur. Remote card sorting is better for closed experiment where a taxonomy has been designed, rather than an open card sort where the goal is to discover categories and facets. The best practice recommendation is to run some prior tests of the taxonomy before that online experiment. Have a trusted expert do the test, and then throw away obvious problems. If the pre-test doesn’t go well, try again. Testers in an online setting have a low tolerance for obvious problems, so the test needs to about validating a good design.

Choose online tools carefully: The tool I used, websort.net, had a major problem. It only allowed a term to be classified under one and only category. This proved frustrating to users. For example, users wanted to classify durable medical equipment under the category for Equipment but also under the category for the Disease or Chronic Condition. Dave Cooksey, who tracks tools, says remote tools are improving all the time — so evaluate tools and choose wisely.

Be sure to thank the participants: We all feel manipulated by many of the group activities we attend in the face-to-face world, and that can happen in the remote world as well. Being authentic and courteous is important. Provide a thank you and be sure to share results or feedback. If possible, consider some kind of compensation such as a gift card.

So given that a test that seems so simple on the surface requires work to set up, what is the value of this work. The purpose of a taxonomy is to determine top level facets that can be used to organize and search for information. If we look at a topic like Medicare, we know that we have a national problem determining standards for insurance policies. It is difficult to compare policies, and it is also time-consuming to manage the costsIn designing good remote crowdsourced card sorting tests, Dave and Joseph have the following recommendations

Pay attention to the sample size

Recruit carefully to be sure the sample has balance of perspectives

Run tests prior to online activity. Have experts try the test.

Remember the goal of a taxonomytest is to find the higher level categories that overlap between the technical expertise and general understanding.

The result is a better analysis of shared group understanding – shared mental models of how we collectively categorize concepts, not individual understanding

In the scheme of a trillion dollar problem like health care, a project to set up well-designed remote cards sorts that can compare how different user groups sort fundamental medicare concepts seems like a small investment. A well-run test with a good recruitment could be a very good way to jumpstart better designs of websites such as Medicare that deliver clearer information about benefits and choices.